Hell's Hatches

g through its hawse-pipe as she let go anchor a couple of cables' lengths off Kai beach, stands alone in the horror and the painfulness of its memories. It is characteristic of all but the most deg

s an underbred hunter refuses a jump. Oh yes, I had an excuse. "Seeing green" is next thing to "seeing yellow." Almost anyone knows that. But I had thought that there was enough red blood left in me to make it possible for me to take the bit in my teeth and finish like a thoroughbr

ter a spell of low barometer, had finally failed altogether. Kai was lapped in sluggish moisture-saturated airs that clung like a wet blanket. The Gargantuan popcorn-like piles of the trade clouds were replaced by strata of miasmic mists which awakened

n "Slant" Allen failed to appear for his wild end-of-the-afternoon dashes up and down the beach. Rona dropped in languidly one afternoon to say that Bell w

ee," she punned in a feeble flicker of plea

ugh. He, at least, had the st

us delight; never had she dropped me to profounder depths of horror and despond. The night before the Cora came marked a new "high"; also a new "low." I dropped like a plummet straight from a pea-green grotto full of lilies of the valley, maiden's ha

which I struggled to maintain precarious footing. If I could only push back into the rock ... through it ... out to the air! Nothing could stand against the mighty heave I gave with my shoulders. The cliff parted with a great rip-roar of rending, and I reeled back, back, straight through-t

hat way, unless, of course, you fall into water, or set fire to the house, or do something else that calls for instant ac

the infernal sunrise-unless it was to take me there again? I knew that it was a real ship. I knew those black things festooned along its rails were real dead men. I knew that the horrible reek which presently came pouring in over the oily water to penetrat

from the weed-slippery landing and went full-tilt for the beach. A man-a big man, bare of legs and of chest, wearing only a red sulu-ran down to meet it. It seemed no more than a perfectly natural development of the ghastly pantomime that the big man should raise a revolver and shoot one of the black

ror that gripped me as I backed away from the Brink of the Pit which now impelled me to "back away" from the new menace. Seizing my painting things from sheer force of habit, I slunk off through the

refused to react. The shock of the morning had been too much for them. I realized that Kai had a mighty knotty problem on its hands with that shipload of dead and dying niggers in the lagoon (Laku had told me it was

on the very first occasion (which was not until a day or two later) that I had a chance to stand off and look at it objectively. There was revealed in it too much of the utter unmanliness which marked my conduct on this m

n out to the beach, from where their glasses quickly gave them a pretty good idea of the state of affairs aboard the luckless black-birder. Then they got together at Jackson's-the lot of them in their pajamas or sulus, just as they had tumbled out of their sleeping mats-to decide what was to be done. The majority at first seemed inclined t

to tote him home to my shack and do what I can for him. If he can't clamber out I'm going to wade in and carry him back to the beach, so you'll have to shoot the two of us if you shoot at all. But I don't think you will. I'm not asking any of you chaps to have anything to do with the stunt. You needn't touch him. I'll take him home and s

the score of letting the Doc have the job all to himself. He turned down every one of the volunteer nurses, however, saying it was his own kettle of fish and that

of the whaleboat, and start carrying the limp body up the beach to where a spreading bread-fruit tree shaded the door of the sheet-iron shack which he was wont humorously to refer to as his "professional, social and domestic headquarters for Melanes

r and his mate were already dead, Doc just as cheerfully set about paying to the Agent the debt he felt he owed to old Mike. Before entering his house, he called to his girl-a saucy little Samoan named Melita, who had gone

ion as he could of how things were on the Cora. Then, after communicating (from a safe distance) what he had learned to a delegation from executive

w to take-side-stepped the plague completely, quite as completely, indeed, as he sidestepped the Thursday Island customs au

lacks had been battened down in the schooner's forecastle and 'midships hold for seventy-two hours, with nothing but a couple of stubby wind-sails feeding them air. The dead had all been cleared out before this was done, but there were a

have the black crew (only three or four of them, luckily, had succumbed to the plague so far) well in hand. That brightened the outlook a good deal, for what Kai h

m, and could be counted upon, the Agent thought, to see the game through. The only trouble was that he couldn't navigate, so that if the Cora was going to be taken to a port where any real relief could be obtained,

for Doc Wyndham. The later and more representative meeting was hardly up to the earlier one on the score of quality. There were a few out-and-out rotters on the island, and about the worst of these was a typical Wooloofooloo larrikin from Sydney, whose name I have forgotten. As foul of tongue as of face, he was as sneaking and cowardly as a wild Mal

rlie outlaw took the proper and necessary action. His straight-from-the-hip kick doubled the miscreant up, breathless, speechless, upon the floor-the only floor of sawed boards i

ame, popped up and volunteered to sail her to any non-French port in the Pacific. That brought a cheer for "Froggy," but the enthusiasm died down a bit when it transpired that the only ships the

were trying to urge their respective claims at once when "Slant" Allen's

e nearest port which had quarantine facilities equal to handling more than a dozen cases of infectious disease wa

one of the whole mob of you young hopefuls that wouldn't be pinched and clapped in the brig ju

think he had countered not uneffectively when he asked: "Who i

the emergency which confronted them all. In the event that Captain Bell should see fit to assert his claim to this place of honour, as he had no doubt would be the case, he-"Slant"-was in favour of giving that claim precedence over all others, both because of Captain Bell's well-known ability as a navigator (his late slip, they would all admit, was due to circumstances quite beyond his control), and because he was the only competent man available who would not have to step out of the frying pan into the fire

tion to allow him to carry out his suggestion, adjourning in the meantime to await developments. It was significant, in the light of what trans

k, stopped in at his own for five or ten minutes. Indeed, nothing that he

t Jackson's, as it had been assumed he would, "Slant" led the way to a little dugout canoe lying in the shade of the coco palms in front of Bell's and started pulling it down to the water's edge. When it was seen that the slender Australian was doing most of the tugging, while the big American seemed to be blundering about to small purpose, it was remarked at

stralian plied his paddle from the stern. It was remarked that the dugout's progress was very slow, but "Slant's" leisure

in the bow enough for a hulking yellow giant-easily recognizable as the lusty Ranga-Ro-to throw a mighty arm around its waist. Then, with his other arm looped round a

Ranga had displayed in hoisting Bell's husky frame out of a wobbling canoe and u

orders to the Malay bos'n. Immediately the canoe pushed off, great activity was observable among the crew, w

out. Grounding the canoe on the beach near where it had been launched, he made directly for the door of Bell's

se he pulled it off all right. But he-"Slant"-couldn't allow a white man to tackle a job like that alone. He had only landed to pick up his kit and a few things Bell wante

ame out from there it was in the company of a girl-plainly the "Peacock." Paddled by a third party, who came upon the scene at this juncture, these two went off to the schooner, boarding her just as she filled away on the first tack of the almost dead beat to the entrance of the narrow seaward passage. For all they knew o